Former FIRST Lego League Team Takes Idea From Prototype, To White House, To Shark Tank

Each week, Shark Tank showcases passionate inventors pitching their ideas to a team of “sharks” with the hope of striking a deal to get the capital they need to make their big ideas a success. The sharks are a tough audience, but one group of kids not only made their way onto the show, they walked away with a deal. I spoke with them about their invention and the excitement of developing a product that could help save lives.

The former FIRST Lego League team called The Inventioneers came up with an idea to help with distracted driving called the SMARTwheel. If you take your hands off the wheel for too long, little red lights glow and there’s an audible tone. It even knows if you’re driving one-handed or with both hands right at the top of the wheel which is a common method of texting while driving.

“One of our team members was just learning how to drive, so we were thinking about some of the problems with distracted driving and that’s how it all got started,” said 12-yr-old team member Kate Balcom. What started as a part of a FIRST Lego League challenge eventually became the idea that they pitched on Shark Tank.

The SMARTwheel, Image: SMARTwheel

T.J. Evarts, the 14-year-old team leader, talked about how the experience of being in FIRST Lego League encouraged them to see just how far they could go. “One of the big advantages about the program is we try to take our ideas as far as possible,” he said. “These are inventions that could actually help the world so we were really inspired to put them out there.”

They even conducted a university funded study at MIT for two days to see how people felt about driving a simulated car with the SMARTwheel. The results, according to 14-yr-old Emily Balcom, were really encouraging. “We surveyed those subjects and 90% of them said that the SMARTwheel would be an effective driver training tool and 70% said they’d buy the SMARTwheel if it was tied to an insurance discount.”

The results were so encouraging that the team even filed for, and received, provisional patent protection to protect their idea for a year. They saw this as important part of the process, and it helped them flesh out their ideas further, discovering even more possible applications for their invention.

The Inventioneers Meet President Obama, Image: White House by Pete Souza

For the 2009-2010 season, their idea earned them the title of World Champions for FIRST Lego League and eventually led to them being invited to present it at the first ever White House Science Fair. You’d think that getting to show your invention to President Obama would be the be-all, end-all, but there was still more.

The producers of Shark Tank invited them onto the show and they left with a deal for a $100,000 investment at a 30% stake. They actually snagged two investors in Robert Herjavec and Mark Cuban who went in on the deal together.

The process is still moving along, with all the legal details of such a hefty investment being worked out, and the team is excited for what lies ahead. With the success they’ve had so far, we might all be driving cars with SMARTwheels someday.